Structural evidence from SANS on self-assembly of antimicrobial lipopeptides and their interactions with small unilamellar vesicles

Previous studies have demonstrated that the de novo designed antimicrobial lipopeptides can self-assemble to beta-sheet nanofibers, but can transform to alpha-helical monomers once interacting with the anionic bacterial membranes. Following the above work, we propose to investigate the structural evidence of the self-assembly of lipopeptides by using small angel neutron scattering (SANS) to characterise the nanofibers before and after interactions with small unilamellar vesicles (SUVs). This work will provide valuable molecular insight of modes of action of the the lipopeptides to different model membranes.